


go easy

by merriell



Series: antarlina (e) [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aggressive Talking, M/M, Magic, blatant display of masculinityTM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 01:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19937635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: 2022. Giri knew that there was something wrong with Reno, his best friend's new lover, but no one would believe him, and it was really grating.When Reno followed him out for a cigarette, he decided to confront Reno about it.





	go easy

Reno smelled like lingering cigarette smoke, the kind that seeped into his clothes, and something expensive but not quite masculine, like it was an androgynous cologne that bloomed from his bare neck. Giri noticed this quite recently when they were standing on the outer walls of Anta’s house, Giri lighting up his clove cigarette, wondering why Reno followed him out when he had been dedicating most of his time leeching off Kinan’s warmth. 

He’d wanted to ask, of course, but silence had been their company since five minutes ago, and it was hard to say anything to someone you have been passive aggressively glowering for the last couple of hours. Especially if _that someone_ had pointedly ignored your expression, stare focused on his lover so easily, you might have done nothing at the first place. 

Which was why Giri was relieved when, halfway through his cigarette, when the bitterness crawled to the back of his tongue, Reno was the one who broke that silence. 

“You don’t like me,” he said, not a question but a sentence. 

Giri didn’t spare him a glance. He’d known Reno for a month after Kinan brought him over after Anta invited him to dinner, he barely knew anything about the guy, yet the assessment was completely accurate. He didn’t exactly _need_ to. He could see darkness seeping through the back of Reno’s head, like a dark gloriole of a fallen’s angel, his aura too dark to even have been standing beside Kinan without affecting him. Yet, every time Giri had seen Kinan with Reno, he seemed brighter than ever, like the contrast of Reno’s darkness only served to turn him into the sun. 

“I don’t dislike you,” he settled, at the end. He brushed off the ashes of his burning cigarette and scowled. “I don’t _like_ like you, either.” 

Anta had dismissed the worry when Giri brought it up to him. _He seemed nice enough_ , he had shrugged, but his boyfriend had always been non-committal, and he was incapable of seeing aura like Giri did, so what does he know, really? 

“How eloquent,” Reno mused. His voice had been flatter and more disinterested than ever, but it brought nothing but annoyance for Giri. 

“I _don’t_ need to be eloquent.” 

He turned to face Reno, this time. Their gaze met. Reno’s eyes was dark and murky; it felt like staring into a dark pool at the night, where he could only see the reflection and not what was inside. His expression never changed. Reno only smiled when he was around Kinan, something that his friend deemed as romantic and not creepy. A raise of his left eyebrow was the only thing Reno given him, their faces too close. Nothing intimate inside it, only silent _threats_. 

Reno snatched his cigarette from him before he could do anything. His lithe fingers, pale and bony, closed around the burning cancer stick and he pushed it against his own lips. He took a drag, smoke filling the empty space between them. Something wild flashed behind his eyes, but disappeared when he pressed back the cigarette to Giri’s lips, the warmth of his fingers brushing on the soft skin. 

Giri’s breath hitched, very, very quietly. 

“Sorry, Wardhana,” his voice was saccharine, like he was on the edge of laughing, but Reno never laughed; he laughed only when Kinan laughed, and it should _weird_ everybody out, but only Giri thought it weird. “I’m not really into into people that aren’t eloquent.” 

The cigarette fell between their feet. Giri, never the creature of subtlety these past few months, only turning sweet and soft when he was with Kanggani, Ami, and sometimes Anta and Kinan, definitely _not_ in front of someone who was disturbing his personal space, decided to shove. His palm found home in the empty wall beside Reno’s shoulder. 

Reno had avoided him in time. Undisturbed, like he had been expecting it. He didn't even do so much as glance at the blatant display of harshness.

He didn’t move away, though. He was waiting. 

“There’s something about you,” Giri practically _growled_. He wasn’t proud of it, but he had his reasons to be aggressive, it was a _condition_. “You can act like you’re some kind of a prince charming when Kinan’s around, but you can’t hide from me even then. I see your darkness. If you do something to Kinan, I will fuck you up.” 

“You say that, and yet,” a calculated pause as Reno gestured around them, “I’m not the one who’s being violent, am I?” 

That slapped Giri out his reverie. He pushed away from the wall with a small grunt. The threat still hung heavily in the air, an evidence, again, that Girindra Wardhana was someone feral, a weapon ten years making, and his frequent visits to Lawang Sewu only cemented that into his bones. What it also given him was an instinct. Every part of him is roaring that there was something wrong with Moreno Makarim, even when nobody else seemed to notice. 

He wished that sometimes Ami was his real sister. She would point out the same thing out of the guy, Giri was sure of it. Right then, though, he had no choice but to let whatever had transpired between them go. 

Reno moved gracefully and made his way back inside. His darkness followed. Giri tried not to point out how dark it was, not the gray of someone who had no qualms of breaking the law, not even the purple of someone who didn’t care much about other people. 

No. Reno’s aura was black, like void, like his _eyes._ Darker than anyone Giri had ever seen, even his father, and Krisna Wardhana had made it his mission to beat young Giri every single time he fucked up his binding magic. 

Giri would find a way to prove _that_ before it stained Kinan’s brightness. Even when nobody believed him. 


End file.
